Right now we settled on fixed angles a-la vintage Resident Evil. I love this because it makes my work easier when it comes to environments. But the way cinemachine works, plus having to preserve a fluid player movement, has been a big headache.

All could be solved with tank controls, but I’m not sure I want to make players move like that when the combat is so fast paced…

The way it works on Parasite Eve (main inspiration for the gameplay) is similar to other Square JRPG. They place the player inside a diorama-style pre-rendered background that often show a black void; as if they were floating in nothingness. When laid out like that they can simply have it be a bird’s eye view or a semi-isometric perspective most of the time. And when they play around with more cinematic angles like Resi, they actually have loading screens in between. This prevents making players feel disoriented while still using a sensical control scheme; with the big downside of fade to blacks every couple seconds while exploring (this is especially bad during the hospital/laboratory stage).

I told this to newprogrammer today and we’ve been playing around with a script that maintains player movement based on the previous camera transform, then updates to the current one once players let go of the left stick. It produces an unexpected result in which the character can spin in erratic ways, but the main concern is alleviated. I’m guessing it will need more playtesting before we settle on something, but the current goal is for it to feel closer to, say, Devil May Cry. We’ll see.

Once that’s out of the way I can be a bit more mindless while placing cameras. That doesn’t mean being lazy and not frame literally everything with a careful eye – not at all! I just want to waste less time debugging why the cameras are making me ill and triggering in all the wrong ways by simply walking like a normal player would.

Problems aside I’ve been working hard on the new map. I’m midway through it and I’d have way more if I didn’t waste nearly two days just fiddling with the camera stuff. It actually delayed my schedule for level design… Very cringe! But I’m relieved I could identify the issue and work towards a fix instead of putting up with it.

I want to finish the whole thing this week, then it’s time to make another map, and another…

Thinking seriously of cutting one stage cause I can already see myself going insano.